Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Swedish silence ...

... Tranströmer's Whispers in a Microphone. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

1 comment:

  1. I really like Transtromer and I've enjoyed what I've seen of Fulton's translations.

    Robin Robertson (yet another Scot) who won the Forward Prize for Best Collection in the UK last year, for his book Swithering, has also recently published Transtromer translations. There's a review in Poetry Review (along with Don Paterson's Rilke).

    A quick excerpt from one of Robertson's translations - a perfect illustration of "Swedish silence":

    The bus negotiates the winter night:
    a flickering ship in the pine forest
    on a road as narrow and deep as a dead canal.

    Few passengers: some old, some very young.
    If it stopped and switched off its lights
    the world would be deleted.

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